Posts tagged with: Eastern Orthodox theology

In the most recent issue of The City, I have an essay on Orthodoxy and ordered liberty. I argue that Orthodox theological anthropology, which distinguishes between the image and likeness of God and two forms of freedom corresponding to them, fits well with the classical understanding of ordered liberty.

In particular, I examine these freedoms with regards to the family, religious liberty, political liberty, and economic liberty, arguing that the Orthodox ascetic tradition has much to offer to modern Christian social thought with regards to how best to order the freedom we have by virtue of being created after the image of God toward that freedom from passion and sin that finds its fulfillment in the likeness of Jesus Christ.

Of interest to our readers here, with regards to economic liberty, I write,

We are created with a capacity for freedom, autexousio, to be used for the purpose of the moral freedom of theosis: eleutheria. Thus, just as we ought to offer up our bodies as living sacrifices to God (cf. Romans 12:1), so also we are to offer up God’s creation to him through our labor. God has given us the earth in order “to tend and keep it” in a paradis[ai]cal state (Genesis 2:15). Thus, acknowledging … our propensity for failure, we nevertheless have a duty to make of God’s creation what we can, imitating the creativity of God and exercising the dominion he gave us (Genesis 1:26).

We must, then, have liberty in society to freely cultivate the resources of the earth for the sake of the higher good of self-sacrificing love. Helen Rhee affirms in Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich, her study of wealth and poverty in the early Church, the consistent patristic teaching of both the affirmation of private property rights and our moral duties to use our property for the good of others (what is known in the West as the “universal destination of goods”)….

With regards to the book’s last chapter, “Constantine and the Culture Wars,” I write,

… LeMasters does a good job in acknowledging the line between principles of faith and morality on the one hand, and prudential judgments that may not be as clear-cut on the other. He does not give the impression of advocating any specific political program; indeed, he explicitly disavows such a project:

Religious groups that are strongly identified with politics risk becoming so entangled in debates shaped by interest groups that their distinctive witness is obscured. To give the impression of being merely a political party at prayer is a good way to make people think that the church has little to say to the world that the world does not already know on its own terms.

He does not use this as an excuse, however, to disengage from political life. He only highlights that in applying the teachings of the Church to our present, political context, we ought not to expect any concrete embodiment of our ideals, and we should be wary of any person or group that makes such a claim.

Rooted in the Tradition of the Orthodox Church and its teaching on the relationship between God, humanity, and all creation, Fr. Michael Butler and Prof. Andrew Morriss offer a new contribution to Orthodox environmental theology. Too often policy recommendations from theologians and Church authorities have taken the form of pontifications, obscuring many important economic and public policy realities. The authors establish a framework for responsible engagement with environmental issues undergirded not only by Church teaching but also by sound economic analysis. Creation and the Heart of Man uniquely takes the discussion of Orthodox environmental ethics from abstract principles to thoughtful interaction with the concrete, sensitive to the inviolability of human dignity, the plight of the poor, and our common destiny of communion with God.

Today at Acton University, Fr. Michael Butler examined the history of Church-State relations in the Orthodox Tradition with special reference to the modern, Russian context in his lecture “Orthodoxy, Church, and State.” The audio of his lecture will be available via Ancient Faith Radio sometime in the coming weeks. As a teaser, I would like to briefly examine two concepts of Orthodox political theory to which Fr. Butler devoted specific attention: symphonia and sobornost.

Due to the influence of Max Weber, symphonia is often mischaracterized as caesaropapism (a term he coined), the state in which a nation’s sovereign is supreme in all ecclesiastical matters as well as those of state. It would be, then, a complete absorption of the Church by the state. Actual historical instances of this would include (to varying degrees) the Church of England where the monarch is the head and Imperial Russia from Tsar Peter the Great’s Westernizing reforms to the Bolshevik revolution. In the latter case, as Fr. Michael noted, one can see a distortion of symphonia for the elevation of state power, but not its essence or, by far, the complete historical picture. (more…)

While some environmentalists claim that Judaism and Christianity have been neglectful of environmental concerns, the history of these faith traditions shows otherwise. Matthea Brandenburg looks at the patristic witness, using the recent work of an Eastern Catholic scholar who argues that prayer and a healthy, every-day asceticism can keep relations between Creation and Creator on solid footing. What’s more, we should also be cautious about secularized views of nature offered by contemporary Gnostics—technocrats with “special” knowledge. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.(more…)

Since its inception, the Journal of Markets & Morality has encouraged critical engagement between the disciplines of moral theology and economics. In the past, the vast majority of our contributors have focused on Protestant and Roman Catholic social thought applied to economics, with a few significant exceptions. Among the traditions often underrepresented, Orthodox Christianity has received meager attention despite its ever-growing presence and ever-increasing interest in the West.

This call for publication is an effort to address this lacuna by engaging such a rich and long-standing tradition. Submissions are welcomed in a variety of forms: they could be historical, critically engaging the thought and context of one or more particular figures influenced by the Orthodox Christian tradition (such as Vladimir Solovyov, Sergey Bulgakov, Nicholas Berdyaev, or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) or assess the impact of significant events in the history of the Orthodox Church; they could be exegetical, seeking to carefully interpret often perplexing texts of various writers or to bring to the fore the economic thought of various official documents such as The Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church or various Patriarchal encyclicals from any of the Orthodox Patriarchates; they could be comparative, comparing and contrasting the similarities and differences between Orthodox economic thought and other Christian traditions; or they could be constructive, seeking to synthesize the thought of various writers and documents into a coherent and relevant whole or seeking to creatively engage economic problems and their popular solutions from the point of view of Orthodox theology and anthropology.

For example, is Vladimir Solovyov’s critique of abstract individualism and collectivism in The Justification of the Good an Orthodox analogue or precursor to economic personalism? How economically tenable are Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s various ecological, social, and economic statements? To what extent does The Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church encourage a freer and more virtuous society? Does Orthodox theology significantly engage the natural law tradition? Could the economic thought of sometimes not-so-Orthodox writers of the Eastern tradition be improved upon by being adapted to a more historically Orthodox perspective? Given the conciliar nature of the Orthodox Church, to what extent can one form Orthodox social and economic thought based upon the historic canons and councils of the Church?

In addition to articles, the Journal of Markets & Morality also welcomes translation proposals for our Scholia and Status Quaestionis sections, early modern or premodern texts for the former and more recent texts of the last few centuries for the latter, preferably those which have never before been translated into English. Indeed, to this day our only Orthodox contribution to the Journal has been a translation of Sergey Bulgakov’s “The National Economy and the Religious Personality” by Krassen Stanchev for our Status Quaestionis section, Volume 11, Issue 1 (Spring 2008).

TheJournal of Markets & Morality is a peer-reviewed academic journal published twice a year—in the Spring and Fall. The journal promotes intellectual exploration of the relationship between economics and morality from both social science and theological perspectives. It seeks to bring together theologians, philosophers, economists, and other scholars for dialogue concerning the morality of the marketplace.